199 comments to Midweek Unthreaded

You know our country is screwed when………. The minister for Home Affairs is vilified for allowing two Au Pair girls into Australia to work when they only had holiday visas
and yet not a mention of the many serious criminals that he tried to deport, but were allowed to stay in Australia, by the actions of the people screaming the loudest.

G’Day TedM, Damn, your right of course, problem is I suffer from “outrage” and the fingers think for themselves. Still, up here in the low part of the high country, the sun is shining and the grass is growing, my magpies already have babies so a bit of dive bombing has to be endured. My day will get better.

Spoke to a shop owner in far north western NSW and she told me they were in for a few lean years because that’s the way their climate has always been .
Also took a photo of a Stevenson screen behind the shop and sent it to Jo because of where it was in relation to buildings a road and a veggie garden that had a sprinkler running at the time .

Damn but your maggies are precocious. Ours are still knocking the ice off their beaks and I’m nowhere near any high country. The only bird I have seen nest-building is a European Blackbird that hangs around my garden. Nothing around here has young. Many of the winter migrants have not even returned yet. Cuckoos and koels won’t be back for another 2 or 3 months. The bowerbirds are starting to court though; you can hear the male buzzing and whirring in the trees. Every blue object will start disappearing shortly as he decorates his bower.

Black cockies are going crazy chewing everything in sight because they are hungry. They have discovered my macadamia tree and all you can hear is the sound of nuts cracking. Their powerful beaks make short work of a hard macadamia shell and the back yard is strewn with nut shells. It should make mowing the lawn interesting, but I don’t begrudge them the nuts.

We had 4mm rain. Does that count? Most of the top end of the Hunter Valley has had bugger all. I’m in the lucky area (mid Hunter) where the grass is still green. We had 4 inches of rain in autumn which has kept us going all winter. Major farming areas like Newcastle and Port Stephens have had a few inches over the past week or so, where it’s really needed. Sarc.

I’m in QLD just north of Briso. We’ve had just under 1 inch of rain so far. I looked on the bom rain radar this morning, the showers were coming in from the ocean, but dissipating soon after crossing the coast. The radio reports magpie dive bombers, but I haven’t witnessed any yet. I don’t think any birds here are nesting just yet.

You also know our country is mad when there are people in both major parties suggesting we should reduce the number of livestock to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when the world is likely heading for a major food shortage.

It’s the cattle they want to reduce, their rumen is a mini fermenter. They burp a lot of methane. But having their own distillery is what enables them to live on the rough pasture we have out west because the cellulose is partly broken down before it reaches the gut.

The nutters who wantt o reduce cows arent doing from CO2 point of view – they are covertly pushing us toward vegie food. If you can demonize meat, you can wean people off it.

By the way, they will have a foot & mouth “outbreak” if they decide we arent getting the hint, to force us off meat.

These people are seriously unhinged and brutal – they will do whatever it takes to achieve their seriously messed up aims…..this is the problem with these Occultists who get involved with the Devil – the Devil promises them worthless trinkets of earthly power and prestige, then sells them short. But they are too power-hungry and blind to reason, and will become the Devils useful idiots, but we will suffer in the mean time…..

I reckon the luvvie media and the Murdoch clique promoting the more blatant globalists, the gang of Turnbull-Frydenberg-Bishop, may have slipped up by shooting too early. The contortions required to install Turnbull and then make him a victim must have cost the likes of the ABC, Miranda Devine etc some pain; the ABC because the globos were still Libs, after all, Devine because Turnbull was the kind of posh green/left personage she would normally deride.

Well, we all know that our journos – left, right, libertarian and centre – can all make sacrifices when required. But here’s the thing: when it was clear that Turnbull was gone they went to war too early with Dutton, someone whose manner, appearance and background made him a shot duck before the season could open. The even-better-than-Turnbull option, Clintonista and media-darling Bishop, is now almost a saint and living national treasure…but too late.

They’re stuck with Morrison, who’s hard to target personally and not quite the perfect Davos Man as regards policy and outlook. He just might survive, and the Libs with him. Suddenly, the utter cynics who lead Labor will not look so enticing to the punters, and even the more bratty journos and talking heads will not be able to seize on a raw onion or glance at a watch.

So with Dutton they could have launched all missiles. He could have been destroyed in the media and then replaced by a Bilderberger’s dream girl, whether he won an election or not. One way they got Bishop, the other way they got the grotesque Labor leadership which was even worse – and thus even better. What they weren’t counting on was a Lib leader who may be only eighty percent globalist…and eighty percent is not enough when you have a world to infect.

Morrison MUST start knock-em down, drag-em out fights with labor on electricity, CFMEU and a few other things as Credlin recommended last night. That is the only way to convince the conservative base that they aren’t simply sleep-walking over the cliff, that they are worthy of another chance.

I went through this with a friend. They understood it Ok, but not its implications.The planet is warming anyway and that graph is a cherrypick. Why start the data run in 1960 one may ask. It is obvious to most people. No pointing out that US data set has a ubiquitous signal in the 1930′s.

“Nuclear may be emissions-free but it still needs strong champions to break into the renewables club.”

How mad is Australia? Carbon Dioxide the essential gas of all life on earth, from which all the trees, plants, insects and animals are made almost entirely is now an evil and dangerous pollutant and nuclear power is ‘emissions free’?

Why nuclear? The rest of the world has chosen coal and very convincingly so. We should join them and keep our existing coal fired power stations open as long as possible and start planning to build new ones.

1. Nuclear waste:
The waste generated by nuclear reactors remains radioactive for tens to hundreds of thousands of years.
Currently, there are no long-term storage solutions for radioactive waste, and most is stored in temporary, above-ground facilities. These facilities are running out of storage space, so the nuclear industry is turning to other types of storage that are more costly and potentially less safe.

The Australian Green even want the closure of our one very small reactor used for medical purposes

11. Closure of the OPAL nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights and development of non-reactor technologies, such as particle accelerators, for the production of radioisotopes for medical and scientific purposes

but now that Carbon Dioxide is classified as the most dangerous molecule in the Universe, Nuclear power is prefereable?

It shows how far science has been corrupted by the Green parties.

Of course they also want

13 The elimination of nuclear weapons, through a commitment to legally binding instruments to prohibit nuclear weapons.

the only thing which has kept the world from a war per generation, the norm for thousands of years.

Perhaps they could pass laws against war, starvation, poverty and sarcasm?

“The elimination of nuclear weapons, through a commitment to legally binding instruments to prohibit nuclear weapons.”

mmmm, cause the psycho that really wants to unleash nuclear weapons really cares about legal consequences. Reminds me of the cry for tigther gun laws when someone gets shot, but an unlicensed person with an unregistered gun. Yep, more laws, that will fix it.

The nuclear option can wait. We have plenty of cheap coal and the world is using it more and more so we might as well use it more and more too, not less and less as we were closing down our coal fired power stations. Although that downward trend apparently has been halted thanks to the new energy minister, the trend needs to be reversed ASAP to follow the rest of the world and avoid our competitiveness being wiped out completely.

I suspect Morrison is not making a stand now for fear of losing Wentworth. Let’s wait and see. So we might have to wait a couple of months. My guess at this stage is they will eventually take some steps to cut power prices but it won’t be enough. Conservative voters will become disgusted once again and Shorten becomes our next PM. If that happens I hope the LNP is destroyed as they would deserve it. Morrison and Taylor already have stated that renewables subsidies will be phased out but it will take years, and in the meantime they will “subsidies” existing and new coal fired power stations. Messy but it might work if people are patient, which I suspect they are not.

If you don’t dig it up it’s a wasted asset like an ice-cream you put in your pocket ’til tomorrow. It is also “free”, you don’t have to pay any supreme being or their agents [the churches] for digging it up. All you have to do is to pay a tax [royalties] which helps fund government and the costs of harvesting which are less because of the energy density.

Perhaps they could pass laws against war, starvation, poverty and sarcasm?

The EU tried to ban memes with its restriction on copyright etc. I believe that was part of what UKIP managed to help block going through the secret committee route so memes are not blocked yet. Yes they are trying to curtail most forms of rhetoric and/or humour that doesn’t toe the party line.

On nuclear, I personally had been staunchly against it’s usage in Australia but the more I look at the options I have more or less been against the traditional Rod ‘n’ Water models that persist to this day. Liquid salts as a medium hold much more potential from a safety perspective and a fuel carrying agent but viability still hasn’t reached mainstream. I am no fan of Rod ‘n’ salt models that have also popped up as that seems just to keep companies with vested interests like GE etc happy rather than delivering decent results.

There is much potential in liquid salts as a delivery system and Australia could position itself in that field. Thorium was the main talking point but re-using old rods in some of the tests have shown some success and some issues as well.

Coal should still be the primary source of power but I see no harm in allowing other sources being tested. Renewables en-masse have failed that much is true.

As those in Japan found when they realised they had to reprocess the solar panels since they are classified toxic etc. There is quite a stockpile of panels awaiting processing and it keeps getting bigger. Nothing like ‘green’ pollution, everything they end up suggesting ends up worse for the environment it seems.

TdeF,
Radioactive material remains radioactive until its last atom decays. It is scientifically inexcusable to infer that any nuclear material, whether from a reactor or elsewhere, remains radioactive for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
The proper concept deals with the levels of radioactivity that can be managed with prescribed safety. The unused material from a nuclear reactor can, by definition, be handled with safety because past management methods have exceptionally good safety records. There is no inferred danger if we simply continue routine management, or improvements on it.
It is greenpeace propaganda that we have to manage nuclear waste for lengthy time periods. That is not scientifically or historically correct. Please do not assist in spreading their nonsense. Geoff.

A lethal dose of plutonium, for example, is one picogram. The half life of plutonium is 24,000 years. The world has tons of plutonium. By the way, one picogram is 10-12 grams, so a ton of plutonium, properly distributed could kill 10+18 humans, a billion billion. So what’s to worry?

Even very dangerous isotopes like Cesium 137 have a half life of 30 years. This may not seem like much but 30 years later after 1986, today in fact, there is still half the Cesium 137 at Chernobyl. 30 years from now it will be a quarter, but it is just as dangerous in the biosphere.

The safe disposal problem will never be solved. If only we had spent that $1,500Billion a year of windmill money on safe fusion, we could have had unlimited safe nuclear power not 350,000 windmills.

I don’t see any insurmountable problems with disposal of nuclear waste. Firstly, the uranium we use is all close to the surface, otherwise we would not mine it. It too has a long half life or it would have decayed away before now. This slowly decaying material contributes to background radiation, which is everywhere. Mining surface material and burying it in the bowls of the earth seems a plus to me.

Is it safe to bury it? Why not? There are salt mines in Europe that would not be gold mines today, they would be safe repositories because salt deposits are ipso facto geologically stable. There are gold mines in Sth Africa that are so deep they must be air-conditioned. Their costs must be high. How much would you need to offer them to buy this hole in the ground? Who thinks our oil drillers haven’t found salt deposits under our own deserts?

The good side of the Chernobyl experiment is that so few died, showing many things about the release of vast quantities of really dangerous pollutants into the biosphere. That was the good news. The fact is that the shroud on Chernobyl has to be replaced every 20 years to prevent a worse disaster. The international community is just about to finish a new confinement sarcophagus to last another 100 years at a cost of $2Billion. Then it will have to be rebuilt and hopefully with partial demolition of the original concrete sarcophagus.

This is not fear mongering. This is reality. While a great proponent of nuclear power, you have to know the risks. They are vastly higher than coal fired power stations outputting natural CO2.

The U235 at Polo was almost totally depleted in the uranium mined in Gabon. That means the plutonium was long gone too. As explained, it does have a 25,000 year half life, which is nothing in geological time scales. Technically it can be made if the U235 content is particularly high, but that was very long, long ago. Eons. All the world’s tons of plutonium has to be man made. I was not wrong.

The half life of plutonium is more like 240,000 years, which means that you would have to be exposed to its radiation for years and years before that was a problem. The real problem is its toxicity (like many heavy metals) when swallowed or inhaled, so turning it into a cement or rock reduces the risk.

Thus, contrary to popular belief, plutonium does occur naturally in the environment and is not solely a manmade material. According to Glenn Seaborg, perhaps we should rethink the number of naturally occurring elements and recognize that rather than 92, there are really 94 such elements.

Please, TdeF, you are dipping below your usual, appreciated standard.
You write about Chernobyl, its low fatality count, the release of vast quantities of “really dangerous” pollutants to the biosphere.
Let us remove some oxymorons.
The very low human harm demonstrates that the radioactive release was not really dangerous.
On a less social and more scientific take, I add that what should be learned from Chernobyl has not been learned. Primarily, there is too much reliance for OH&S on laboratory dose rate dangers and not enough on actual demonstration.
The aim, for crooked scientists, is to extract maximum fear from the least quantity of radionuclide.
We should also note how soon Nagasaki and Hiroshima were safely repopulated and celebrate the disproof of excess fear by the reality of experience. Geoff

I stood at ground zero in Hiroshima last November. Thriving city. Met the son whose mother survived and entered the city the day after the explosion. She survived into her 90s. He is in his 60s sickly as a child but we’ll now. Tourists everywhere, school children everywhere.
What happened to all the radioactivity?
What about natural background radiation.
What about airlines pilots who are exposed to increased cosmic radiation.
Are the long term impacts of radiation totally exaggerated??

Hiroshima was a baby. 13kiloton. Today’s suitcase bomb. The real missiles are 10-100Megaton, 10,000x as deadly and 10,000x the radiation. Uranium bombs are also different to plutonium bombs and hydrogen bombs. Then there is the question of what is included with them, the ‘dirty’ bombs, the neutron bombs. There was no concept of this in the Manhattan project. They just wanted an end to the war.

Yes, we are learning that mankind is vastly more resistant to ambient radiation than ever thought. 7 cosmic rays a second pass through everyone. Possibly they are as important to gene change and thus evolution as any mistake in DNA replication.

However the vast number of nuclear power stations and the amount of waste collected in the last 70 years would be astounding if anyone knew. Yes, the danger will be there for tens of thousands of years. That is not Green propaganda but it is all a balance, like everything else in life. We cannot wish the world and life on earth was different. Windmills and solar panels are not the answer.

I guess the other view is that the genie is already out of the bottle. When England had no wind for ten consecutive days this summer, they paid for unfailing French nuclear power.

Then no matter how much dangerous nuclear waste there is in the world, in the next fifty years it will only double or triple. Considering how dangerous it is and the half life, it hardly matters. Hopefully in that time we will perfect glassification, the only technology which seems to last long enough without leaching. Storage in the desert or salt mines are the alternative and in combination, a great improvement on 44 gallon rusty barrels of waste, as around Lucas Heights in Sydney.

One of the great successes of the cold war period was the banning of atmospheric testing, finally by the French. Even Kim Jong Un’s regime were forced to do their testing underground, destroying the mountain itself but releasing little radiation.

The good thing which came from the now illegal atmospheric testing was the doubling of world C14, enabling the world to accurately measure the half life of man made CO2 in the atmosphere. We know without question it is 14 years and that the increase in CO2 since 1900 is 98% natural. That should be the end of man made global warming, but as the Greens are utterly science ignorant, their nonsense continues.

Oh come off it, TdeF,
When you claim immense quantities of nuclear waste are dangerous, how can they be dangerous if they are causing no harm?
Look at it this way. Last year, USA nukes produced enough electricity to power theoretical millions of electric cars. The nukes killed nobody we know of. Cars killed thousands. You fear nukes more than cars.
You seem to be willfully neglecting that risk is what is measured, not what stupid greenpeace invites you fear. Geoff

I have not dropped my standards. Do you really believe what you wrote?

The world has massive overkill in nuclear weapons, biological weapons, nerve gas but there is no danger?
The word which was used in the Cold War was detente. A balance.

Nuclear waste is extremely dangerous for the planet. I am in favor of coal until we can find a cleaner solution than nuclear. However people need power and nuclear works and the danger is past the point where we can do anything about it. To pretend there is no danger is not right.

I would rather the $1,500,000,000,000 a year spent on not using coal was spent on solving nuclear waste, developing fusion, increasing efficiencies, saving energy, reducing waste and if we can change the climate, changing it. It does not help to pretend there is no problem.

I am also in favor of coal because it is absolutely clean. CO2 is not pollution, industrial emissions. It is what you breathe out every breath. It is what powers every living thing. It is what forms every cell of your body. To call CO2 industrial pollution is akin to calling H2O industrial pollution. Appalling ignorance or wilful deceit.

I am also not arguing against nuclear power. Rather I think we should not just take a contrary position to the Greens on principle. Totally unlike coal, there are real problems with nuclear waste and they are not going away. Yes, I hope we can solve them, but we do need to solve them.

I’m in favour of coal too, but for economic reasons. CO2 isn’t a problem, but I can’t agree that coal is “absolutely clean”. E.g. radioactive waste. That pretty much squashes the “absolutely clean” claim, and it’s doubtful that the economic argument for coal would stand up if we treated its waste as fastidiously as we treat the waste from nuclear plants.

Some reactors can utilize radioactive materials as fuel. This is one of the claims for the superiority of molten salt thorium types although others also could use them.
Most existing reactors are designs based on generating plutonium for bomb making.

And those drums at Lucas Heights are there because of Greenie scare tactics preventing trucking away. THey want a source of fear available. There was a shipment of rods to Pt. Kembla on July 30TH for shipment to France for reprocessing.

Why? Fracking works, possibly the greatest invention in the fuel industry anywhere. There has never been any effect on aquifers anywhere. No visible disruption. No open cut mining or the massive waste problems of shale excavation.

Fracking has made America rich again, eliminated oil imports and turned the country around. It allows the US to deal with Iran.

Even better the country people are empowered again and have their own president who is winding back all the repressive legislation against even digging your own dam on your own property. Desolate places like the Northern Midwest are booming. Regional cities, farm incomes and you get paid without any downside. As for our land, resources like this belong to everyone as with any mining rights. The alternative is windmills in the bush and endless transmission lines for the cities.

Again, the Greens, the people against everything don’t like it. They fear for their inner city public service sheltered lifestyle.

That not exactly true, the issue really is that the way property law works is that even though it’s your land you don’t own the mineral/resources under it, so in theory a mining company just needs a mining lease to mine it. However most mining needs surface infrastructure. In the case of CSG a pump and compressor on the surface and the process of gas mining can (but usually doesn’t) foul the surface environment. For example the existence of CSG well on someone’s property may make it difficult for adjacent growers to get or retain organic certification.

There isn’t a framework in place for the landowner to dictate the terms of the rental of the pad/compound that actually resides on the surface and therefore on the landowners property. These terms are not free-market , they are dictated by the miner (Which is exactly the reverse of how it should be). Access can be compulsorily acquired at rentals as low as $20 per month with no contractual terms regarding contamination.

Land owners generally are not against the mining they just want a fair rent for access to their properties for the surface pumping plant and associated roads, and the ability to contract intergenerational penalties in the case of contamination that protects their income and the welfare of their descendents to which the property will fall.

In general I personally think the government needs to improve the law to allow neighbours to have arrangements with the miner to protect their welfare as well, especially if the wells catchment extends across property lines underground.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that in the U.S., the landowners are paid for the gas extracted from under their lands. If this was introduced into Australia, would this change the landowners viewpoint?

Graeme#4. Yes, in the US property owners also own the mineral rights to the centre of the earth. In Australia they only own the surface land and someone else can own the minerals. It could be changed by law.

The land owners would be smart to make access free but negotiate for a % of the wealth extracted. From what I have seen, the land used is nothing much and the access is not a big deal, so anyone charging only for access and rental has the wrong end of the stick.

In theory, if you could freely negotiate “rent” for the well head, then that “Rent” could be related to production – If you rent a really nice house you pay a higher rent. The problem is that landowners aren’t free to negotiate in a free market way because of the availability of compulsory acquisition to the miners.

It would be better to legislate that landowners have a right to share royalties with the state though.

Anyway, the issue isn’t so much environmental, it’s a basic unfairness in wealth share between the landowner and the miner/state. The only ay to fight back is to refuse access – (Lock the gate)

Thanks David and others for your comments. However, nobody has commented on my query as to whether landowners would change their stance if they received money from the gas extracted. The experience from the U.S. seems to suggest that they would.

As well as making amicable arrangements with the neighbours it would work even better if the land owners themselves pocketed some of the profits from the resources being extracted similar to what happens when aboriginal land undergoes mining and development.

In google earth zoom in on the area in Texas near the corner of New Mexico, like the corner of SA into Qld. Individually each well-head may be insignificant but when they are in their thousands they certainly blight the landscape. I’m not saying the Texans should not have donee this, just saying there is no free lunch.

‘A large foreign-owned mine planned for prime agricultural land in the NSW Hunter Valley could cause the Bylong River and local creeks to “dry up”, according to an assessment by the NSW Water Office obtained under freedom of information laws.’

Qld ABC Country Hour the other day was banging on fracking around (IIRC) Bundaberg and the “expert” was highlighting the “dangerous chemicals” and the amount of water used. My goto bloke who has a career in the oil and gas industry is out of contact so I can’t cross check this atm.

But IIRC

a lot of the water is now recycled (after all they don’t want it in the producing well), and

The chemicals used aren’t very exotic. One in UK used Marmite – toxic I suppose if you’re a “Happy Little Vegemite”

That’s Marysville Peter C…not Maryborough. The church is open on Weds but we weren’t there as we happen to be in Dubai! It was 44C in the carport yesterday (though not as humid as it is in Jul/Aug). A bit of a shock to the system after -1C at home early Monday morning!

It’s actually a pity to be away from home at this time as lots of lovely spring flowers are showing up and the nectarine blossom is just coming out. Special celebrations for family and friends are coming up so here we are on the move again. I am pretty sick of airports various although I have to say that I think MEL has lifted its game immensely and we were very quickly through DXB. We are just so tired though.

For those interested in good old fashioned carbon fuelled machinery you might be interested in the Lake Goldsmith Steam Rally in November, located about two hours drive from Melbourne. Note, most of the machines now burn wood rather than coal because coal is now heavily taxed in Victoriastan.

We saw a lot of smearing when David was presenting us with his Notch Theory for his warming paper. And the occasional troll makes a fool of himself by trying to smear Jo, but he usually gets laughed off stage. I don’t read the MSM’s, but I’m sure there would be much smearing going in them, as Jo hits them mercilessly pretty regularly.

There’s a new book out by either Woodward or Bernstein [forget which] that is simply calling Trump a disorganised idiot. Clearly it is timed to affect the mid-terms but I doubt it will. Any Trump voter today has already been exposed to every “hate” virus so won’t notice this one.

What policies are the dems running on? Repeal the tax cuts, abolish ICE, open the borders and “we all hate Trump”. Good luck with that.

I always though Trump would win the presidency and reckon he should do OK come Nov for the same reasons but I didn’t pick the nic “Hanrahan” for nothing. I have a pessimistic streak.

“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

All three (3) of Mt Ruapehu’s ski areas are still CLOSED due to ‘inclement weather’ – the latest cli-sci-fi excuse for when it’s not hot – with gale force sou’esters providing a -13˚C wind chill (max air temp of -3˚C) and over 1 metre [3 feet in old school lingo] new snow expected during the next 72 hours, on an already 3+ metre deep snow base.

I know it’s only weather, yet if this trend continues, we’ll be in for another South Pacific White Christmas – I’ve enjoyed a few during the past three decades, despite protestations and failed prophecies from carpetbagging shysters and self-appointed charlatans [from French, from Italian ciarlatano, from ciarlare‘to babble’].

Not only is it snowing on the tops of South Africa today, there’s now a call for snow as far north as Namibia (on the high peaks) tomorrow. Surely this is the “tripping point” they’ve been warning us about…

Greg, I live in a low part of the Victorian high country, not that far from the famed Mt Buller ski resort. Bumper ski season, still a metre of natural snow on the summit. The big hill behind my house often has snow during the winter, although it normally doesn’t lay long, the last dump we had about three weeks ago is still there in patches. It sleeted at my house during this cold front, a mate of mine rang to say he was feeding his cows in the snow could I go and give him a hand. Still the minimum daily temps for August were reported as + 0.8 above long term averages. This global warming better arrive soon, I have already started collecting next winters firewood as I burned considerably more than average over the last three months. Another local snow resort, Lake Mountain, has also had a bumper season with lots of natural and man
(person ) made snow and remains open for tourists. More snow forecast over the next day or so. As you say, “it’s only weather”

Sambar, that brings back memories… pitched my tent on the shores of the lake near Albury-Wodonga, mid-winter early 80s, on a roadie south from QLD. Woke up pre-dawn freezing the proverbials off, got up to make a coffee outside and whoa! All the hills / mountains in the distance were shining white in fresh new overnight snow. Wish I’d had some firewood then. Cheers!

You can get a roadside wood-collecting licence in our area, with various stipulations of course.
We have been through a lot of wood this winter…it’s been long and cold. We do have small woodlot areas of our own so not much use made of the licence.

Actually you can collect firewood in certain Victoriastan forests now without a permit ,there are rules that have to be followed etc but I’ve just been out for a second load since getting back from our up north trip and should have enough to last till next season but may stock up for the year just in case .

Your sort of right there TdeF, Here in Victoria my entire youthful activities have made their way onto the illegal list. All of these activities were not only legal in my youth, they were considered right and manly and an essential part of growing up. There are exceptions of course where you can just pay money and what, if done for free, is bad, on the payment of the proscribed fee, is acceptable. As Annie has said, you can get a firewood permit.
Firewood collection areas are generally considerable distances from towns. The arguement is these areas are selected for their suitability. You know the speel. Nothing endangered, no rare animals or plants, oh and coincidently, in my experience, rubbish wood. I would suggest that they are purposely selected to deter people . Yet we burn hundreds of acres ( even hectares ) of high quality logging coup residue every year. Don’t take any home though the “man” will have your guts for garters.

I had this experience this year in Tahiti. The scientists on Tahiti (there are many of them of course) were planning to destroy the COT until a Tahitian woman sang a song. About the Crown of Thorns starfish. In their racial memory it came, it destroyed, it cleaned, it produced sand and it died out. The reef was renewed, the fish, the sands. It was part of the cycle of life. The Tahitians welcomed it as the great renewal. The American ecologists changed their view.

We have observed the reef for no more than half a life time. The Tahitians have had a thousand years to observe. It would pay to listen. There are cycles of which we are completely ignorant, but our instinct to intervene because we can has to be tempered with the fact that the reef is older than we are. It survives and prospers, over time.

This desire to interfere with nature equally to man made Global Warming. The likelihood is that we are insignificant and that cycles happen of which we are yet unaware. Bleaching has happened many times. It’s in the coral record. CO2 changes are natural. Attempts at intervention is likely to be folly, or useless, even if you have $444million to intervene.

Personally I have never heard an argument that increased CO2 heat only the water around the reef. Has anyone had this explained to them? How does it work? Where is there any actual science?

4 Sept: Science Daily: Parsing natural climate variability from human-caused climate change
Source: Yale University
Summary: A new study says pink noise may be the key to separating out natural climate variability from climate change that is influenced by human activity.
Writing in the journal Physical Review Letters, Yale researcher John Wettlaufer, graduate student Sahil Agarwal, and first author and Yale graduate Woosok Moon of Stockholm University found that pink noise energy signatures on decadal time scales appear in historical climate proxy data both before and after the Industrial Revolution.

“A central question in contemporary climate science concerns the relative roles of natural climate variability and anthropogenic forcing — climate change related to human involvement — which interact in a highly nonlinear manner on multiple timescales, many of which transcend a typical human lifetime,” said Wettlaufer, the A.M. Bateman Professor of Geophysics, Mathematics and Physics at Yale.
“We find that the observed pink noise behavior is intrinsic to Earth’s climate dynamics, which suggests a range of possible implications, perhaps the most important of which are ‘resonances’ in which processes couple and amplify warming,” Wettlaufer said…https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180904150358.htm

2 of the authors previously:

13 March 2017: Science Daily: Looking for ‘fingerprints’ at the intersection of weather and climate
Source: Yale University
Summary: Scientists have found the seasonal ‘fingerprints’ of Arctic sea ice, El Nino, and other climate phenomena in a new study that probes the global interactions between weather and climate
Journal Reference:
1.Woosok Moon, John S. Wettlaufer. A unified nonlinear stochastic time series analysis for climate science. Scientific Reports, 2017https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170313160839.htm

“It’s incredible that it stayed hidden off the US East Coast for so long.”

Cordes said the ecosystem is unlike anything he has seen, with “mountains” of corals.

Dr. Sandra Brooke, a coral ecologist among the research team members who dived near the site, described seeing thriving white Lophelia coral covering the sea floor in every direction and told HuffPost it was a surprise to find so much live deep-sea coral far from the coast.

Coral reefs form more easily near the surface of the water, where the sun can feed the algae.

4 Sept: CNN: Trump to name climate change skeptic as adviser on emerging technologies
By Jenna McLaughlin
William Happer, a Princeton atomic physicist and prominent skeptic questioning whether humans are causing rapid climate change, is joining the National Security Council as senior director for emerging technologies, according to NSC officials…
His public stance on climate change is in opposition to near universally accepted science.

He told CNN in April 2017 that carbon dioxide is not the toxic “pollutant” it’s made out to be and “the temperature is not rising nearly as fast as the alarmist computer models predicted.” He compared the Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015 by the US under President Barack Obama and 194 nations, to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s and said it was “silly” and “should be canceled.”…

Happer, who is not a climate expert, specialized in atomic physics and the study of optics at Princeton…
Happer has said he is not a “climate denier.” He told Foreign Policy magazine in May 2017 that “climate has been with us forever” and it’s ridiculous to “deny” it…
However, he said he would advocate for a rigorous public review of the science of climate change and its causes were he to return to public service.
“If it’s this important, why haven’t we had a public review of it,” he questioned. “We have that all the time in defense programs … if you’re going to put in a new fighter jet, you have a red team that tries to find something wrong with it,” he told Foreign Policy.
Happer was part of discussions on participating in an administration exercise to debate climate change…

Happer, who met with Trump during the presidential transition, told The Scientist magazine he had spoken to the President about the importance of having scientists working in the White House so he could listen to their advice.
Happer also said they agreed that climate change science has become like a “cult movement,” and that they had bonded over the President’s uncle, John Trump, a former physicist, as well as over a shared interest in making the US more competitive in science and technology…https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/04/politics/happer-climate-denier-trump-adviser/

5 Sept: Bloomberg: Dire Climate Change Warnings Cut From Trump Power-Plant Proposal
By Jennifer A Dlouhy
Last-minute edits spiked talk of the risk to future millennia
Changes made after draft landed at White House for review
Drafts had devoted more than 500 words to highlighting the impacts — more heat waves, intense hurricanes, heavy rainfalls, floods and water pollution — as part of the proposal to replace Obama-era restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. That language was left out of the Trump administration’s final analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, when it was unveiled Aug. 21.

Among the abandoned assertions: an acknowledgment that “the climate has continued to change, with new records being set” for global average surface temperatures, Arctic sea ice retreat, carbon dioxide concentrations and sea level rise, all markers of the phenomenon.
The administration also scrapped a reference to numerous “major scientific assessments” that “strengthen the case that GHGs endanger public health and welfare both for current and future generations.”…

The spiked language also would have provided more justification for government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, further tying the EPA’s hands on the issue…

US supports backdown on Paris reduction targets
The Australian-9 hours ago
A senior US official has backed the Australian governments decision to walk away from legislating emission reduction targets in the Paris Agreement, labelling it …
The US and Australia have been under pressure this week at Pacific Islands Forum meetings in Nauru, where leaders had wanted to call climate change the …
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke — a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet responsible for environmental issues — also said Washington disagreed that…

4 Sept: E&E News: Zinke visits islands threatened by warming. What will he say?
by Adam Aton; with Jean Chemnick
Zinke’s trip will focus on military and trade issues, according to the Interior Department. It comes at a time when the United States is trying to counterbalance threats from China and North Korea.
Those were also concerns for the Obama administration, which sent emissaries to the forum such as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Both of them touted climate aid as a symbol of American power…

The problems have grown since then among the island territories under Interior’s responsibility. But Zinke — who has shrugged off climate’s role in wildfires, ecosystem degradation and ocean warming — avoided mentioning it in his pre-trip statements…

Still, the U.S. climate team, and its international counterparts, will be elsewhere. This week’s U.N. climate talks in Bangkok mean Zinke will likely focus on areas of consensus, such as trade and aid opportunities, rather than climate change — which could prove a wedge issue for additional member nations like Australia…

5 Sept: Bloomberg: Climate Envoys Seek Successor to $33 Billion UN Carbon Market
By Mathew Carr; With assistance by Natnicha Chuwiruch
SDM would channel funds for fighting pollution to poor nations
Push to agree on rules for market by the end of this year
After the United Nations’s first attempt to build a global carbon market fizzled from $33 billion to almost nothing, climate envoys from almost 200 countries are meeting in Bangkok this week to give it another go.

The diplomats gathered in Bangkok this week are working on a so-called Sustainable Development Mechanism that would channel investment into projects that cut pollution in some of the poorest countries of the world. Richer nations that provide much of the finance would get credits in exchange that go to help meet their commitments on reducing emissions, which may allow them to take on more ambitious goals…

To developing nations such as Brazil, which is pushing for the mechanism, a deal would have the potential to raise billions of dollars to clean up energy production and bring in entrepreneurs like the founder of Tesla Inc.
“To transform billions into trillions, you have to send the right signal so that early movers are recognized,” Thiago Mendes, climate change and forestry secretary in Brazil’s Ministry of Environment, said in an interview. “We want to have an ‘Elon Musk guy’ in all countries.”…

The SDM as it is known for short would replace the CDM, or Clean Development Mechanism…
Initially backed by the U.S., the CDM gave markets a central role to play in slashing emissions by handing an incentive for rich countries to pay for projects to lower emissions in developing ones. China was the biggest beneficiary…

Prices of CDM credits have languished below 1 euro a metric ton since 2012 after trading as high as 23.38 euros in 2008. Prices have risen to 29 euro cents from 18 cents in the past six months, and there’s a chance that talks culminating this year will spur further advances, according to Stefano De Clara, director of international policy at the International Emissions Trading Association, which lobbies for carbon pricing…
There’s still a chance existing credits may die. Countries may prefer to use bilateral emission-reduction deals, also allowed by Paris, instead of the SDM, IETA said…

Leftists teachers now want to encourage transgender on children as young as 5 years old. This is not only disgusting it should be a crime. If I had a child go through such an experience I would sell my house, hire the best lawyer I could afford and make sure the teacher is put behind bars for life.

Beware honey that has never seen a bee. Capilano has been nabbed selling fake honey under its Allowrie label. Capilano has had a dodgy reputation amongst many bee keepers for some years and this does nothing to improve that opinion.

Chinese rice syrup that passes most standard honey purity tests is being blended with real honey. In Australia’s case, the official test is C4, which is decades old and can’t detect rice syrups. The C3 tests, which are supposed to detect rice syrup, can also be cheated according to Chinese suppliers.

The only reliable test is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), which found that almost half the 28 samples of well-known blended local and imported honey brands bought from Australian supermarket shelves were “adulterated”.

The lab tested eight Allowrie honey samples as well as IGA’s Black & Gold private label and ALDI’s Bramwell’s Mixed Blossom Honey private label brand. Aldi withdrew its honey, while IGA said its honey was sourced locally from an Australian producer and kept it on the shelves. Capilano initially criticised the test but is now backing it, with the news coming at a bad time for Capilano which is the subject of two rival takeover bids.

Two big questions spring to mind:

What is a big Australian honey company doing buying in honey from China?

Why would any company in its right mind buy any foodstuff from China given that country’s well documented food scandals with melamine contaminated baby food and unchecked pesticide levels in crops?

As one who relies on a daily Honey and Cinnamon beverage to control Rhumatoid Arthritus, but cannot afford genuine Manuka Honey, I have variously been using Capalano and Aldi’s labelled pure Australian and pure organic Honey respectively for around 5 years as a substitute for mainstream medicine’s prescription of Prednisilone/ Methotrexate. I am disappointed that Australian authorities responsible for food and beverage products meeting advertiser and manufacturers claims have been asleep on the job, and are hopeful that they all are held to account with personnel dismissal together with heavy fines.

“Why would any company in its right mind buy any foodstuff from China given that country’s well documented food scandals with melamine contaminated baby food and unchecked pesticide levels in crops?”

x100 , anything out of China is a blanket no buy in our house if disclosed. We have changed quite a few brands over this and its a bit of a eye opener how widespread Chinese food content is once you are looking.

Is anyone else as concerned as i am at the escallation of proposed grid scale battery installations in tha coming months ?https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-big-battery-to-be-installed-at-lake-bonney-wind-farm-24094/
Multiple projects in SA and Vic , such as the 140MWh battery Gupta is planning for Cultana, as well as 52MWh for Lake Bonny, and numerous others of various capacities are all in the planning.
The technology does not concern me, but the motivation for them does ..
Its the financial benefits that is the deciding factor it seems…

….. Infigen’s plans to add battery storage at Lake Bonney – which was built near Mt Gambier in three stages between 2005 and 2010 – were first flagged in May, buoyed by the fresh and surprising success of the Hornsdale Power Reserve………
….., HPR continues to capture the attention of energy analysts, policy makers and market operators and investors, due to its impressive results on earnings, and particularly its apparently valuable ability to “dash in and out of the market.”…..

… In other words , they have seen another opportunity to game the market and rip more money out of Australian consumers !!
It seems AEMO has lost the plot completely with regards to cost control.
Strange that we never needed these wonderous battery system before the advent of RE generation ?

Who knows how much subsidy these project attract? However a word or two about South Australia’s Tesla Battery;

Without seeing the contract details it is rather difficult to know the true cost of the battery system, however a few things seem clear;

1. The SA government paid $50 million. Which seems to have been a subsidy since the government does not own the facility It is owned by the French company Neoen. We will probably never know the true cost.

2. The battery is now operated as part of the Australian Energy Market (AEM), alongside the Hornsdale windfarm, which is also owned by Neoen.

3. The operating modus operandi is to sell battery power, along with production from the wind farm, at times when prices are high. Of course, at these times the owners also receive the Large Scale Renewable payment of $85/ MWhr., In itself a hidden subsidy mandated by the federal government, although ultimately paid by power users. The battery is recharged when too much power is available and price on the AEM are in consequence very low. IMO a classic case of gaming the system at the ultimate cost of taxpayers and power users.

4. Clearly the installation of the battery has done nothing to reduce power prices, the opposite in all probability.

A Forbes report generated at the time of the SA battery installation claimed its true cost was closer to $150m. I recall seeing a similar new U.S. battery installation at around $100m. So I believe that the SA govt obtained a good deal for $50m.

Concerned yes, but also resigned to the knowledge that there is SFA that I and all Climate/ Renewable Energy Sceptics can do to stop this obscenely gross waste of taxpayers money.
The Man Made Climate Change/ Renewable Energy Industry has become Too Big to be allowed to fail.

Be alarmed; be very alarmed – According to Roy Spencer the average lower troposphere temperature for August 2018 is a whopping 0.19C above the 30 year average to 2010.http://www.drroyspencer.com
So a solid 60 years of unprecedented runaway human caused warming has given us 0.19C. I am confident that the figure is meaningless in terms of actually determining if the planet is warming or cooling.

I expect if you asked most of the people on the globe, who listen to or see news headlines, they would say that August 2018 was exceptionally hot. For example:

2018 IS a record-breaker! Met Office confirms summer is officially UK’s joint-hottest EVER while autumn is set to be a scorcher too

Yep. Get rid of the entire parasitic energy bureaucratic superstructure and all its sinecured denizens, Audrey, Kerry et al and, for the sake of completeness, eliminate the Chief Scientist. And that’s before we start…

here’s the writer’s twitter page, with some of her “scientists” tweets too.

Twitter: Stephanie Bedo, Senior reporter @newscomauHQ. Previously science communicating @griffith_uni and health reporting at @gcbulletin.
re-tweeted:
TWEET: Tony Matthews, Lecturer in Urban & Environmental Planning, Griffith University. Strategist, commentator, problem solver. Brisbane via Cork.
A timely and important article on the threat of #climatechange to #Australia and the weakness of #policy responses. I’m happy to stand among the cast of #experts pointing out this failure and the dire consequences it will lead to if left unchecked…https://twitter.com/stephanie_bedo?lang=en

news.com.au is as CAGW-infested as the worst of the MSM.

same goes for almost all of Sky News. yesterday, with the PM talking about energy, they had a large banner or whatever across the screen, stating:

Just renegotiated my electricity account and thankfully they were dumber than me at maths , I currently get 33% discount if I pay on time and the new contract they were offering 28% pay on time .
I told them they were $25 cheaper than another company and by reducing the discount it would make them dearer ,after being on hold for 5 minutes they’ve come back with 34% discount and all charges would stay the same .
Average bill just over $500 and my bad maths tell me even at 28% they would still have been the same price as the other company so a win in my books .

of course, it isn’t enough that developed countries have outsourced manufacturing, the climate mob have plans for that too:

5 Sept: EconomicTimesIndia: How wealthy countries are outsourcing pollution
By Brad Plumer, NYT
Over the past decade, both the US and Europe have made major strides in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions at home… But those efforts look a lot less impressive once you take trade into account.
Many wealthy countries have effectively “outsourced” a big chunk of their carbon pollution overseas, by importing more steel, cement and other goods from factories in China and other places, rather than producing it domestically.

Britain, for instance, slashed domestic emissions within its own borders by one-third between 1990 and 2015. But it has done so as energy-intensive industries have migrated abroad. If you included all the global emissions produced in the course of making things like the imported steel used in London’s skyscrapers and cars, then Britain’s total carbon footprint has actually increased slightly over that time.
“It’s a huge problem” said Ali Hasanbeigi, a research scientist and CEO of Global Efficiency Intelligence, an energy and environmental consulting firm. “If a country is meeting its climate goals by outsourcing emissions elsewhere, then we’re not making as much progress as we thought.”

Hasanbeigi is an author of a new report on the global carbon trade, which estimates that 25% of the world’s total emissions are now being outsourced in this manner. The report, written with the consulting firm KGM & Associates and ClimateWorks, calls this a “carbon loophole,” since countries rarely scrutinize the carbon footprint of the goods they import.

That may be changing. Last fall, California’s lawmakers took an early stab at confronting the issue by setting new low carbon standards on the steel the state buys for its infrastructure projects. But dealing with imported emissions remains a thorny problem. Some environmentalists see it as the next frontier of climate policy…

Not surprisingly, China, which has become the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, remains the world’s factory. About 13% of China’s emissions in 2015 came from making stuff for other countries. In India, another fast-growing emitter, the figure is 20%…

If the US were held responsible for all the pollution worldwide that resulted from manufacturing the cars, clothing and other goods that Americans use, the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions would be 14% bigger than its domestic-only numbers suggest. Between 1995 and 2015, the report found, as wealthier countries like Japan and Germany were cutting their own emissions, they were also doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide they outsourced to China…

‘The latest NASA AIRS instrument has actually measured the decrease in IR energy from the Earth as CO2 in the atmosphere has increased. This is observational evidence that an increased greenhouse effect reduces the rate of loss of IR energy to outer space, which should lead to some warming.’

Ah yes, ‘should’. Its a question of sensitivity and there is strong evidence to show the stratosphere is cooling.

4 Sept: Daily Caller: NYT Suggests Global Warming Is To Blame For Roger Federer’s US Open Defeat
by Michael Bastasch
The New York Times published an article suggesting tennis star Roger Federer’s U.S. Open defeat was not the result of being bested by Australian John Millman, but instead because of man-made global warming.
“Roger Federer Is Tough to Beat. Global Warming Might Have Pulled an Upset,” reads the headline of The Times’ analysis of why, in this case, weather is the same thing as climate…
Times climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis suggested Federer’s comments about the hot, humid weather after his defeat made him “an unwitting spokesman for the effects of climate change.”…

Dr. Ryan Maue, an atmospheric scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute, pointed out the absurdity of blaming a few days of hot summer weather on man-made global warming…

However, even Pierre-Louis admitted “[s]hort-term weather conditions are not the same as long-term changes to the climate, and a few hot days do not prove a trend,” she insisted “the unusual heat and humidity that appeared to strain Federer are in keeping with the changes that atmospheric scientists are seeing under human-caused global warming.”
“Normally this time of year, the daytime high temperature tops out at 80 degrees, with overnight temperatures in the 60s,” Pierre-Louis wrote, glossing over the fact she’s still talking about daily weather…

“juvenile” is a word I use for most of what is broadcast by theirABC, so utopian-like larry (cyclone?) cards seems appropriate.

nonetheless, Michelle ***”Google” Guthrie clearly needs to be made redundant or fired!

5 Sept: Guardian: ‘The Wiggles for grown-ups’: ABC staff bemused by Utopia-like ‘Larry cards’
Management says thank you cards should be used to improve morale – but staff say they are being treated like toddlers
by Amanda Meade
ABC staff are reeling from the latest Utopia-style move from managing director, Michelle Guthrie, which asks them to improve morale by thanking each other with cheesy cards featuring a character called Larry.
If one of Aunty’s 5,000-odd staff has been an “awesome” employee they may receive one of a range of bespoke cards: a People Focused Larry card, an Open & Transparent Larry card, a Straight Talking Larry card or an Accountable Larry card.
“I am incredibly proud of the work you do every day,” Guthrie told staff. “The high levels of trust we enjoy from our audiences is a tribute to the talent, dedication, and high-quality work of our teams right across the country and the world…
PIC: Another of the Larry card series

The broadcaster told Senate estimates in May that it had shed 1,012 jobs since 2014.
Last month the ABC’s Sydney newsroom put out an urgent call to all state news directors for staff who can fly in to fill “significant gaps in the production roster” for the 7pm news bulletin after letting too many journalists take redundancy…

On Tuesday, Guthrie emailed staff about a recognition program which includes rewarding staff who exhibit ABC Principles with an award – the prize includes a set of ***Google headphones – and a competition to name the new employee recognition awards. The names you can vote for are: Props, Aunty Awards, Kudos or The Gunstons, a tribute to comedian and ABC star Norman Gunston…

One staffer told the Guardian: “It’s like The Wiggles for grown-ups. I mean, who the f*** is Larry? I have no idea what they’re thinking upstairs. Weirdos. I wonder if this is in lieu of actual pay rises, as there’s no money for that.”…
“Those who are recognised will have the opportunity to attend industry events, go behind-the-scenes at different ABC productions, attend a celebratory event in Sydney, and receive other great products such as ***Google headphones.”https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/05/the-wiggles-for-grown-ups-abc-staff-bemused-by-utopia-like-larry-cards

4 Sept: Nature Editorial: Global warming tops the agenda as climate brings down a third (FOURTH) Australian prime minister
Malcolm Turnbull is merely the latest leader to discover that action on emissions remains a difficult step to take.
Australia has two pressing environmental problems: climate change and finding a leader who can tackle it. Large swathes of the country are suffering the effects of a seven-year drought, the bush fire season has hit those parts two months early, and the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef grows more severe each year. Yet late last month, the country’s attempts to make some modest changes to its energy policy to help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions blew up an internal storm in the ruling Liberal party that cost Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull his job…

To lose one prime minister to political fights about climate-change policy is unfortunate. Two would be careless, but Turnbull is actually the third (FOURTH) Australian premier to fall in this way in under a decade. What is going on? And what does this turmoil say about attempts to rein in damaging carbon emissions elsewhere?…

It’s no coincidence that when Turnbull’s political colleague (and then-treasurer) Scott Morrison wanted to criticize environmentalists last year, he brought a lump of coal to parliament and spoke about it in glowing terms. Last week — after Turnbull confirmed he was quitting politics — his son complained about the “undue level of influence” of the coal lobby…

(Morrison) should stand firm. Although the Paris agreement is weak compared with the scale of what is needed, it represents a political triumph and one that places so few binding demands on nations that any withdrawal would be little more than crowd-pleasing theatrics. And most of the crowd won’t be pleased: a June poll showed that 59% of Australians saw climate change as a pressing threat and one that needed action — the highest percentage in a decade…(???)

But politicians in many of these places, even those fully behind the need for action on emissions, are also finding it difficult to follow through on pledges. Take Canada, where Justin Trudeau’s government last month announced it was scaling back plans for a carbon tax. Last week, Nicolas Hulot, the French environment minister, resigned, claiming that governments around the world are not taking sufficient steps to tackle green issues such as climate change. And the reckless stance of US President Donald Trump continues to erode climate regulations and embolden climate sceptics. New Zealand, for one, still has ambitions for emissions-reducing laws, but many of the other promises the country made in Paris — including actual cuts to carbon emissions and boosts in foreign aid to help poorer countries adapt — are weakening under political pressure…

Already the opposition Labor party has promised a new emissions-reduction scheme. And next year, the country will again vote on its leader. For whoever wins that election, curbing climate change should be at the top of their to-do list — and they must be given the chance to hang around long enough to do so.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06164-z

5 Sept: RenewEconomy: Press release: Goldwind puts 1GW wind and solar portfolio up for sale
Unique opportunity to invest in a portfolio of over 1 GW of renewable energy generation development across three Australian states that will have a project value of over $3bn when constructed, providing investors with significant scale and geographical diversity…

PwC have been appointed to run the sales process and will conduct a two-round auction of the portfolio. Buyers are encouraged to reach out to PwC’s Sally Torgoman if all or part of the portfolio is of interest…

4 Sept: PV Mag: China’s Akcome to sell 503.5 MW of solar to ZPEG
China’s Jiangsu Akcome Science and Technology has revealed plans to sell 503.5 MW of solar to Zhejiang Provincial Energy Group (ZPEG), as it struggles to rein in its debts
The CNY 2.4 billion (US$351.4 million) deal involves the sale of 28 solar projects, as well as plans to jointly invest in ultra-high efficiency heterojunction technologies, according to a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange.

The portfolio of PV assets includes 479.38 MW of ground-mount capacity at 19 locations, and 23.53 MW of distributed-generation PV at nine sites.

Akcome, a solar manufacturer that also invests in PV projects, will sell controlling stakes in 14 units of group subsidiary, Suzhou Zhongkang Electric Power Development, which owns the 28 projects. It will also sell 100% equity stakes in 12 of those project companies, as well as 99.75% of Xinjiang Juyang Nengyuan Keji, and 70% of Jiuzhou Fangyuan Bole Shixin Nengyuan…
Akcome says the transaction will help increase cash flows, while reducing its debts and slashing its financial costshttps://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/09/04/chinas-akcome-to-sell-503-5-mw-of-solar-to-zpeg/

4 Sept: Heartland: The Coming Solar Value Cliff
By Jordan McGillis
Solar power is reaching a point at which additional solar production begins to actively harm the grid’s reliability and economics.

“Media headlines touting the falling costs of solar power do not tell the full story. While the manufacturing and installation costs of solar are in fact falling, solar’s value to the electricity grid is also in decline. Solar power is reaching a steep drop-off point beyond which additional solar production contributes no additional capacity to the grid, and indeed begins to actively harm the grid’s reliability and economics. This paper dubs the phenomenon the solar value cliff.”…READ ONhttps://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/the-coming-solar-value-cliff

The trend line on the graph titled “Out of Line on Renewables” is off by a factor of a thousand.

The horizontal axis goes from 0 watts per capita to 1000 watts per capita. The vertical axis goes from 10 cents to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. The trend is therefore: (30 – 10)/(1000 – 0) = 20/1000 cents per watt or 0.20 dollars per kw of installed renewables per capita. The graph shows 0.02 cents per kWH per additional kW of capacity per capita.

Each additional kilowatt of renewable energy per capita raises the price of electricity by twenty cents per kilowatt-hour.”

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. … The time has come to consider how we might bring about a separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in all countries. I call this the disestablishment of science, in the same sense in which the churches have been disestablished and have become independent of the state.
— Jacob Bronowski
In ‘The Disestablishment of Science’, Encounter (Jul 1971), 15.

In times past a man with a brain and an idea could develop that idea with the help of benefactors. The better his brain has proven to be the easier it was to find backers. Today a new pill needs the GDP of a small nation to fund it to approval. Scientists are now public servants.

This week being Frontline Action on Coal week, today — for the second time in 3 days — a single protester brought coal delivery from the Upper Hunter to Newcastle coal loader to a standstill by blocking 2 coal lines. In both cases the protesters rigged up a makeshift tripod over the rail lines and dangled themselves, stopping all traffic on both lines.

This time it was a 17 year old who wants coal mining stopped completely. It took the police 2 ¼ hours to take control of the situation. I have a chainsaw that might have been more effective — 2 legged tripods don’t do too well against gravity.

The lines run to a tight schedule and normally only stop for floods. They carry a 10,000 tonne load of coal every 4 to 6 minutes to Newcastle, so this idiot potentially blocked 225,000 tonnes of coal delivery during his idiotic, pointless crusade.